Polling for by-elections on 8 NA, 3 Punjab Assembly seats underway

Polling for by-elections on eight National Assembly (NA) seats and three seats of the Punjab Assembly has begun on Sunday (today).
The polling started at 8:00 am and will continue till 5:00 pm.
The government wanted to delay the by-elections for at least the next 90 days as it said that security personnel were busy in flood relief works, while there were also reports of terrorist activities during the polls.
But the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) despite two letters from the Ministry of Interior rejected the suggestion of delaying the by-polls and asked the relevant authorities to beef up the security
There are eight National Assembly and three Punjab Assembly sets on which the by-elections are being held today. The National Assembly constituencies are NA-22 (Mardan-III); NA-24 (Charsadda-II); NA-31 (Peshawar-V); NA-108 (Faisalabad-VIII); NA-118 (Nankana Sahib-II); NA-237 (Malir-II); NA-239, (Korangi), Karachi-I; and NA 157 (Multan-IV).
The provincial constituencies are PP-139 (Sheikhupura-V); PP-209 (Khanewal VII); and PP-241 (Bahawalnagar-V).
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has completed its preparations for the by-polls in eight national and three provincial constituencies.
In a statement, Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja said that he has written a letter to the Chief Secretaries and Inspector Generals of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh provinces to ensure peaceful environment and foolproof security during by-elections.
There are 2,937 polling stations in the 11 constituencies 806 for men, 713 for women and 1,416 are joint.
The total number of polling booths at the stations is 9,869, of which 5,294 are for men and 4,575 for women.
A total of 747 polling stations have been declared “highly-sensitive” and 694 “sensitive”.